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Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Staying True to Form (I Told You So, Part 5: Democracy Muslim Brotherhood Style, Part 5)

 

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COMMENT: It is less than shock­ing that Egyp­t’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has for­mal­ly attacked a Unit­ed Nations dec­la­ra­tion against vio­lence against women. This, from the sup­pos­ed­ly “demo­c­ra­t­ic,” “West­ern-ori­ent­ed” orga­ni­za­tion we were told would ush­er in a “new era” in Egypt­ian pol­i­tics.

In fact, of course, the Broth­er­hood is an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, allied with the Axis in World War II. 

The Broth­er­hood is also coop­er­at­ing with the Jama’a al-Islamiya, the Salafist orga­ni­za­tion with which they are sup­pos­ed­ly at odds.

Their mutu­al project is the real­iza­tion to assem­ble a cadre of Islamist civil­ian police to func­tion as a secu­ri­ty force and par­al­lel police. (Note that The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Report feeds along the low­er right-hand side of the front page of this web site.)

We called this shot dur­ing the Arab Spring. Islam­ic fas­cism comes to Egypt. For pre­vi­ous updates on this sub­ject, click on these links:

“Mus­lim Brotherhood’s State­ment on Women Stirs Lib­er­als’ Fears” by David Kirk­patrick and Mayy El Sheikh; The New York Times; 3/15/2013.

EXCERPT: Dur­ing its decades as an under­ground Islamist move­ment, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has long preached that Islam required women to obey their hus­bands in all mat­ters.

“A woman needs to be con­fined with­in a frame­work that is con­trolled by the man of the house,” Osama Yehia Abu Sala­ma, a Broth­er­hood fam­i­ly expert, said of the group’s gen­er­al approach, speak­ing in a recent sem­i­nar for women train­ing to become mar­riage coun­selors. Even if a wife were beat­en by her hus­band, he advised, “Show her how she had a role in what hap­pened to her.”

“If he is to blame,” Mr. Abu Sala­ma added, “she shares 30 per­cent or 40 per­cent of the fault.”

Now, with a leader of the Brotherhood’s polit­i­cal arm in Egypt’s pres­i­den­tial palace and its mem­bers dom­i­nat­ing Par­lia­ment, some deeply patri­ar­chal views the orga­ni­za­tion has long taught its mem­bers are spilling into pub­lic view.

The Brotherhood’s stri­dent state­ments are rein­forc­ing fears among many Egypt­ian lib­er­als about the poten­tial con­se­quences of the group’s rise to pow­er and cre­at­ing new awk­ward­ness for Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si as he presents him­self as a new kind of mod­er­ate, West­ern-friend­ly Islamist.

In a state­ment Wednes­day on a pro­posed Unit­ed Nations dec­la­ra­tion to con­demn vio­lence against women, the Broth­er­hood issued a list of objec­tions, which for­mal­ly laid out its views on women for the first time since it came to pow­er.

In its state­ment, the Broth­er­hood said that wives should not have the right to file legal com­plaints against their hus­bands for rape, and hus­bands should not be sub­ject to the pun­ish­ments met­ed out for the rape of a stranger.

A hus­band must have “guardian­ship” over his wife, not an equal “part­ner­ship” with her, the group declared. Daugh­ters should not have the same inher­i­tance rights as sons. Nor should the law can­cel “the need for a husband’s con­sent in mat­ters like trav­el, work or use of con­tra­cep­tion” — a reform in tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic fam­i­ly law that was enact­ed under for­mer Pres­i­dent Hos­ni Mubarak and cred­it­ed to his wife, Suzanne.

The state­ment appeared in many ways to reflect the Brotherhood’s long­stand­ing doc­trine, still dis­cussed in class­es like Mr. Abu Salama’s and in the group’s women’s forums. Fem­i­nists said its state­ment also may reflect the views of most women in Egypt’s con­ser­v­a­tive, tra­di­tion­al­ist cul­ture. . . .

“Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood To Form Civil­ian Police Units With Oth­er Islamist Groups”; The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Report; 3/132/2013.

EXCERPT: Egypt­ian media is report­ing that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is coop­er­at­ing with oth­er Islamist groups in order form to form civil­ian police units with pow­ers of arrest. Accord­ing to an Egypt Inde­pen­dent report:

Jama’a al-Islamiya and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood announced Tues­day that they are work­ing to form groups known as the civil­ian police in coop­er­a­tion with oth­er Islamist groups. The mili­tias will be able to arrest peo­ple they deem to be crim­i­nals or break­ing laws. Ahmed al-Iskan­darani, a spokesman for the Jama’a al-Islamiya’s Con­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment Par­ty, said the groups would not take action if police were on the streets.

How­ev­er, should police call for fur­ther strikes or with­drawals, com­mu­ni­ty police groups would step in under the super­vi­sion of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry. ‘This sys­tem is applied in oth­er coun­tries,’ he said. To gar­ner fur­ther sup­port for the mili­tias, the orga­niz­ers have issued an open call online. The civil­ian police ini­tia­tive is due to grow­ing strike action of police across much of the coun­try.

Many are also dis­trust­ful of the police after reports of tor­ture and exces­sive force used against pro­test­ers. Yehia al-Sherbi­ni, coor­di­na­tor of the Mus­lim Rebels Move­ment, said his group is will­ing par­tic­i­pate as civil­ian police to main­tain secu­ri­ty and pro­tect pub­lic and pri­vate prop­er­ty. ‘Islamist move­ments are capa­ble of replac­ing the police,’ he said. ‘We can arrest out­laws and hand them over to the police or the army.’ ‘We already start­ed orga­niz­ing com­mit­tees in the Assi­ut and Minya,’ he added. . . .

Discussion

2 comments for “Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Staying True to Form (I Told You So, Part 5: Democracy Muslim Brotherhood Style, Part 5)”

  1. This is the kind of news where one just has to hope that Egyp­t’s new police force pri­vate secu­ri­ty con­trac­tors will at least be extreme­ly adept at stop­ping any pos­si­ble attacks by al-Qae­da affil­i­ates:

    Egypt­ian Islamists deny al Qae­da uni­ty

    Pub­lished: 1:05PM Mon­day August 07, 2006 Source: Reuters

    One of Egyp­t’s most promi­nent Islamist groups, which waged a bloody cam­paign in the 1990s, denied on Sun­day it had made any alliance with the glob­al al Qae­da mil­i­tant net­work led by Osama bin Laden.

    Mean­while, a for­mer offi­cial in Egyp­t’s Gama’a al-Islamiya said that even if some mem­bers had joined al Qae­da — as al Qae­da deputy head Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video aired on Al Jazeera tele­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day — it was unlike­ly that most would do so.

    “The Gama’a Islamiya in Egypt stress­es the lack of truth in what Al Jazeera aired by Dr Ayman al-Zawahri about it join­ing al Qae­da, and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly denies this,” the Gama’a said in a state­ment on its web­site, http://www.egyptianislamicgroup.com.

    The Gama’a (Islam­ic Group) fought a bloody cam­paign against the gov­ern­ment in the 1990s to set up a purist Islam­ic state before ulti­mate­ly declar­ing a truce in 1997.

    For­mer Gama’a leader Sheikh Abdel Akher Ham­mad told Al Jazeera on Sun­day from Ger­many: “If (some) broth­ers ... have joined, then this is their per­son­al view and I don’t think that most Gama’a Islamiya mem­bers share that same opin­ion.”

    Egypt ana­lysts have down­played Zawahri’s announce­ment that a “big fac­tion” of the Gama’a had switched over, say­ing there was no evi­dence al Qae­da had major sup­port with­in the Gama’a ranks.

    In the video, Zawahri named Mohamed al-Islam­bouli as one of those who joined al Qae­da, refer­ring to the Gama’a leader whose broth­er Khaled killed Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat in 1981.

    A man intro­duced by Zawahri as anoth­er Gama’a leader, Mohamed Hakaima, lat­er appeared in the video to con­firm the uni­ty move. But sev­er­al ana­lysts said he was not a major play­er.

    Lim­it­ed base of sup­port

    “I think he does­n’t rep­re­sent any­body here in the coun­try,” said Diaa Rash­wan, an expert on Islamist groups at the al-Ahram Cen­tre for Polit­i­cal and Strate­gic Stud­ies, describ­ing Hakaima as a “low-ank­ing mem­ber” of the group.

    Egypt detained many thou­sands of Gama’a mem­bers or sym­pa­this­ers in the 1990s when the group was wag­ing a low-lev­el guer­ril­la war against secu­ri­ty forces, main­ly in the south.

    But hun­dreds have since come out of deten­tion after renounc­ing vio­lence. Gama’a lead­ers declared a truce after a dead­ly 1997 attack on tourists at a pharaon­ic tem­ple in Lux­or.

    “It is not right to say that lead­ers of the Gama’a Islamiya are join­ing al Qae­da. This is not pre­cise. Maybe we can say it is some indi­vid­u­als,” Lon­don-based activist Yass­er Sir­ri said.

    The spec­tre of mil­i­tan­cy has recent­ly returned to Egypt with a string of three dead­ly attacks tar­get­ting Red Sea resort areas in the Sinai penin­su­la over the past two years, attacks that Egypt has blamed on Sinai-based mil­i­tants.

    The Gama’a has not been impli­cat­ed in those bomb­ings, and ana­lysts said they did not expect any change in Gama’a pol­i­cy after the al Qae­da announce­ment, say­ing the Gama’a lead­er­ship had clear­ly cho­sen to avoid vio­lence in Egypt.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 18, 2013, 12:01 pm
  2. On P. 187–188 the book “Bin Laden the Man Who Declared War on Amer­i­ca” by Yossef Bodan­sky c 1999 states “Pre­dictably, dur­ing the Tal­iban offen­sive in Kab­ul, the Pak­istani ISI took over these spe­cial­ized train­ing camps. The ISI moved many of the Arab “Afghans”-from Egypt, alge­ria, and Sudan-to spe­cial train­ing cen­ters int was run­ning in lahore, Pak­istan. These ter­ror­ists’ skills and exper­tise were fur­ther upgrad­ed after a few months of inten­sive train­ing. The Arab “Afghans” were then regrouped and sent back to Afghanistan with the help of Qazi Hus­sein Ahmad, the leader of the Pak­istani Islam­ic Group. Con­se­quent­ly in spring 1996 a sol­id, well-orga­nized base emerged for the “afghans” ad “Balka­ns” in Afghanistan. This infra­struc­ture was ready for the arrival of Osama bin Laden and his assets.

    The on P. 339 of that book it states “Qazi Hus­sein Ahmad, the chief of Jamaat-i-Isla­mi”.

    This links this orga­ni­za­tion as net­work­ing both with with Pak­istan’s ISI and Al Qae­da.

    If you look at the brains of and cur­rent head of Al Qae­da, Dr. Aye­man al Zawahiri, and Bin Lad­in’s #2 since the late 1990’s. Zawahiri has an inter­est­ing back­ground. He orig­i­nal­ly lead the Accord­ing to this book, ran the Van­guard of Con­quest Orga­ni­za­tion, in May of 1995 met with Sudanese leader King Hasan Tura­bi in Gene­va, Switzer­land which lead to Zaw­i­hiri plan­ning the assas­si­na­tion attempt, from Fer­ney-Voltaire (on the French – Swiss bor­der) against Egypt’s US ally Hos­ni Mubarek.

    Dr. Ayman al-Zaw­i­hiri lead sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions, most notably Islam­ic Jihad in Egypt. And Armed Van­guards of Con­quest. The book alleges that Bin Ladin and Zaw­i­hiri were respon­si­ble for the down­ing of TWA flight 800 on July 17–1996 p. 179–182.

    On P. 235 the book talks about how this nation­less ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion (Al Qae­da) does the dirty work for nations hos­tile to the US so that they can feign respon­si­bil­i­ty for being spon­sors of Islamist ter­ror­ism. It states “All of these activ­i­ties were con­duct­ed under the close scruti­ny of the spon­sor­ing states, pri­mar­i­ly Iran. Since the estab­lish­ment of the HizbaAl­lah Inter­na­tion­al in the sum­mer of 199, Tehran has tend­ed to stay in the back­ground, let­ting such promi­nent but fierce­ly loy­al Sun­ni lead­ers as bin Laden and Zawahiri car­ry out the hands-on activ­i­ties. Tehran for­mu­lates the ter­ror­ist strat­e­gy, sets the over­all pri­or­i­ties, and deter­mines and/or approves the spe­cif­ic tar­gets Through the Com­mit­tee of Three, one of whom is bin Laden, the Islamist com­man­ders now have greater lat­i­tude and auton­o­my in run­ning the actu­al oper­a­tions with­in the guide­lines set by Tehran.”

    On p. 105 of the book it says the fol­low­ing: “In ear­ly 1995 Ayman al-Zawahiri made an auda­cious, extreme­ly impor­tant clan­des­tine vis­it to the Unit­ed States to estab­lish first­hand the strength and reli­a­bil­i­ty of the local net­works and Islamist com­mu­ni­ties and con­firm the suit­abil­i­ty of var­i­ous objec­tives for spec­tac­u­lar strikes already iden­ti­fied and rec­om­mend­ed by the U.S.-based net­works and Islamist com­mu­ni­ties and con­firm the suit­abil­i­ty of var­i­ous objec­tives for spec­tac­u­lar strikes already iden­ti­fied and rec­om­mend­ed by the U.S.-based net­works using one of his Euro­pean forged paspotrs, Zawahiri estab­lished a for­ward base of oper­a­tions in San­ta Clara near San Fran­cis­co Cal­i­for­nia.”

    Wikipedia states the fol­low­ing about Zawahiri

    The U.S. State Depart­ment has offered a US$25 mil­lion dol­lar reward for infor­ma­tion lead­ing to al-Zawahir­i’s appre­hen­sion since the 9/11 attacks and remains in effect.[5]

    By the age of 14, al-Zawahiri had joined the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The fol­low­ing year the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed Qutb for con­spir­a­cy, and al-Zawahiri, along with four oth­er sec­ondary school stu­dents, helped form an “under­ground cell devot­ed to over­throw­ing the gov­ern­ment and estab­lish­ing an Islamist state.” It was at this ear­ly age that al-Zawahiri devel­oped a mis­sion in life, “to put Qut­b’s vision into action.“His cell even­tu­al­ly merged with oth­ers to form al-Jihad or Egypt­ian Islam­ic Jihad.
    In 1981, Al-Zawahiri was one of hun­dreds arrest­ed fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat. Ini­tial­ly, The plan was derailed when author­i­ties were alert­ed to Al-Jihad’s plan by the arrest of an oper­a­tive car­ry­ing cru­cial infor­ma­tion, in Feb­ru­ary 1981. Pres­i­dent Sadat ordered the roundup of more than 1500 peo­ple, includ­ing many Al-Jihad mem­bers, but missed a cell in the mil­i­tary led by Lieu­tenant Khalid Islam­bouli, who suc­ceed­ed in assas­si­nat­ing Sadat dur­ing a mil­i­tary parade that Octo­ber. His lawyer, Mon­tass­er el-Zay­at, said that Zawahiri was tor­tured in prison.

    On Decem­ber 27, 2007, al-Zawahiri was also impli­cat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Pak­istani Prime Min­is­ter Benazir Bhut­to.
    A Sep­tem­ber 27, 2012 arti­cle by Ian Black of the Guardian in UK quot­ed Ayman al-Zawahiri sad that Osama Bin-Ladin was a mem­ber was a mem­ber of the Sau­di branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood before being eject­ed for insist­ing on wag­ing jihad against the Sovi­et Union in Afghanistan in the late 1980s.
    Acquain­tances of Bin Laden have described in the past how he was for­mal­ly recruit­ed into the broth­er­hood as an ado­les­cent in Jed­dah and thrown out over dis­agree­ments about Afghanistan.
    But Zawahir­i’s tes­ti­mo­ny has spe­cial val­ue because he was there at the time as a leader of the Egypt­ian jihad organ­i­sa­tion, which became part of al-Qai­da in 1988.
    Zawahiri said Bin Laden had trav­elled to Pak­istan to deliv­er cash to jihadis in Peshawar but had defied orders from the Broth­er­hood and joined the armed strug­gle.
    See the link:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/27/osama-bin-laden-blind-eye

    Posted by TBD | March 19, 2013, 8:36 pm

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